‘Guests are no longer welcome.’ That’s a sign that sooner or later will go up at the entrance to our home. Why? Because our home has a tendency to resemble a battlefield at the best of times, and a litterbin at the worst. I might just add a small sign just below that, explaining in fine print: ‘Children are a gift from god, and a blessing to the household budget. You won’t have to (or want to) spend on fine furniture or furnishings.’
Parenting from a Refrigerator [Illustration by Anup Singh]
These, in turn, lead to an overturned teddy bear, a bunch of miniature dinosaurs, an upturned bucket crammed with my six-year-old son’s out-of-use toys, that are now ‘in use’ by my one-year-old daughter.
Sanity and order are one room away, with a toy cupboard and a shelf. But the drawing room’s chaos refuses to be chained to these mundane, civilised spaces.
For the kids, it is so much more fun to be right in the middle of where the action is. Where an unseen car or cricket ball can upset mom’s precarious physical and mental balance.
Being a mother often seems to bring in me a continuous sense of deja vu. Twenty years ago, if you had asked me what kind of mother I would be to my children, I would probably have waxed eloquent about how understanding, patient, and loving I would be.
Obviously, it was a complete reaction. My poor mother often got dark looks for pestering me to clean up the room, do my homework or, the worst of all, drink milk. My brother, conveniently, made good his escape at the age of 12. Off he went to a boarding school, seemingly away from all these painful tasks.
Today, when my mother hears me griping about the kids creating a mess, not drinking their milk or just squabbling over a silly toy, she doesn’t offer even a drop of sympathy. Instead, she gets this rather satisfied smile on her face. Sadism in a smile, that’s what I call it.
My husband remains unperturbed. “Stay cool,” he advises, bringing out a few more toys from the shelf as he settles down to play with his daughter. Thirty minutes later, play time is over, and off they go in search of new frontiers where no one-year-old has ever been before.
In their wake, lie the remnants of joy and discovery and fatherly indulgence. All very nice of course. But guess who gets to put it away. Stay cool, huh? I might as well sit in the refrigerator.
My mother-in-law does provide a sympathetic tut-tut, but adds rather dotingly, “They’re just like their father. He was a terror too.” Any solutions? “Stay cool, they’ll grow out of it.” I might as well buy that large-sized fridge we have been thinking about, I tell myself.
Funnily enough, I do realise that the two grandmoms are right. Children do grow out of fist fights and dining table doldrums (especially when they become parents themselves).
My brother and I used to have almost orchestrated fights (with time-outs for breakfast, lunch, dinner and playtime!) but we also loved each other to death (seems, quite literally).
In a replay of our childhood, my toddler daughter trails behind her big brother calling out ‘baiya, baiya.’ For the better part of the day, I see sibling love at its finest. Interrupted by, what I call, a display of ‘wail power.’
Wail power, for those of you not familiar with the phenomenon, is the ability of a pint-sized human to outdo a four-feet tall hulk (otherwise known as big brother), with a deafening display of lung power accompanied by suitably soggy eyes.
Amidst all the clamour and chaos of a house full of children, I’m often reduced to behaving like a sergeant with an unruly battalion. Volume up and patience low, I realise that I often lose out on some of the truly divine moments of being a mom. (“Mom, look what I drew with your lipstick!”).
But help is at hand. I’m now the official biographer of mommyhood for this site. The weekly act of catharsis, of writing about the ups and downs of bringing up two children, seems to be taking effect. A crisis becomes content for next week’s article. That act of transformation itself takes the paranoia out of any situation.
So, the next time my daughter displays wail power, or my son decides to take on Michael Angelo in the task of making murals, I’ll probably rush to my laptop, with a happy gleam in my eye.
That probably means it is time for that warning sign to go up outside my front door. “No guests welcome.” Of course, for those of you who still prefer to brave our litterbin, to enjoy the company of a hyperactive artist and his rebellious sister, the doors are always open.
